NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16271, 23 July 1918, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

The fighting in which the French and Americans have been engaged during the past fe<w days' has taken place on tho familiar terrain of the first invasion of France in August, 1914. It was at the consultation between French and Joffro on the 29th. of that month, as to whether the great retreat should bo still continued, that it was decided to abandon the lines of the Somme an(3 Aisne,'and to retire to the Marne. and on tho same day, the Ist. 2nd, and 3rd British Army Corps withdrew from tho Oompiegne-Soissons line, the Ist (Sir Douglas Haig's) Corps fighting a rearguard action at Villers-Cotterets. Within a week, however, tho position was radically altered, for on September Cth the Allies began to deliver the counter-attack which drove the Germans from the Marne, and on the 9th the Gth French Army was moving rabidly towards tho lino from which the British had been withdrawn less than a for\night before.

Three days later the 4th British Division, operating on the right of the French, found the latter endeavouring to dislodge a German advanced post on the Mont de Paris, south of Sois■sons. and bringing its guns, into action, the enemy was driven across the river at Soissons, where he destroyed the bridges. That was on the Saturday; i by tho following Monday the French and English engineers had bridged the , river in face of terrible artillery fire, 1 and the infantry had won to the further bank. The French had seized the upper half of,Soissons, the lower half being in flames, and the whole town, including; the 700-year-old cathedral, was incessantly pounded by the enemy's guns. Some quarries north of the. town subsequently gave the French a good de.nl of trouble. They had been owned for some years by Germans, who had converted them into very strong positions, and before they were captured the slopes around them are said to have become simply shambles.

Soissons vras not again heard of as the scene of fighting for more than thre3 and a half years. But on May 30tli oP this year, the fourth day of the brief offensive that once more saw the Germans on the Marne, it passed into the enemy's hands, after some extremely heavy fighting. The struggle for the town began on the previous day, when the Germans just reached its outskirts and heavily b mbarded it, several parts being again set on fire. In tho morning the enemy attacked in great force and obtained a footing in the eastern suburbs. Towards noon the French counter-attacked and ejected the invaders. The German resistance stiffened, and for several hours there was stern fighting for possession, but tho valour of the French could not compensate for their numerical inferiority. Tlicy eventually gave way to the assault of fresh German -reinforcements, and retired to the western outskirts. Later on. in the neighbourhood of the town, some of the fiercest fighting of the whole battle trok place, the French counter-attacking with fury, but until last week the So ssons district remained within the German line.

When the fate. both of Rheims and Soissons was trembling in the balance at tho end of May, it was pointed out that while the loss of the former, the largest and most famous of all the towns that had lain for long in the immediate neighbourhood of the front, would be regrettable, its military value was slight. The loss of Soissons, on the other hand, would, it was argued, be of more strategic consequence. "Situated at the Iwnd in* the long battlefront, where the limb of. it which runs nortkwarus hinges oh to the limb which runs eastwards, its transference to the Germans would increase the advantage which they enjoy over General Foch in respect of facilities for shifting the weight of their blow from one side to the other." Its loss did not, however, prove as serious as was feared, because the Germans were so penned in by the French on the west that they were hampered in their movements. That circumstance did not, however,' affect the importance of the position, and its potential value to the enemy in June is the measure of the value to the AOies of its recapture, or practical recapture, last week.

The cheerful statement made by Mr Prothero, President of the Board of Agriculture regarding the food situation in Great Britain was, to a very large extent, anticipated by a summarised account issued at the end of M;iy by S:r Arthur Lee, Director-General of Food Production, of the results of the Government's efforts to increase the home-grown supplies of grain and potatoes.' He set out with the encouraging news that the entire population could be fed for forty weeks on the anticipated harvest of the United Kingdom. That is to say, from September to June the country could live on its own wheat. The wheat crop was the largest for thirty-six years, the oats crop the largest on record, and another new record was premised in potatoes, tße estimated crop being ,50 per cent, over last year,and 27 per cent, above the previous best. The total acreage in corn and potatoes in England and Wales was 8.302,000, an increase over 191G of 2 : 042,G00 acres Over 1,800,000 acies of "permanent grass" had been broken up. Reckoned in tonnage, the net saving in shipping resulting from this - great increase in home production, v.is l put down at one and a half million tons I for the year. The figures quoted above j it may be noted, referred only to hold- • ings of an acre and upwards, but the inoease in allotments alone—from which much "ood could be expected— was 800 OQP over the number in 1916, ; or the equivalent to another 800,000 tons of foodstuffs. And this takes no account of the increased food production from gardens.